


Zygote

by alitbitmoody



Category: The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: Authority Figures, Discussions about the foster care system, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Tags May Change, University
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-04-05 00:24:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14032116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alitbitmoody/pseuds/alitbitmoody
Summary: Vyvyan's past turns up to punch him in the face.





	1. Chapter 1

Vyvyan was not a fan of the Rats In The Walls cafe, the minuscule eatery with the overly large front counter and paltry collection of half-broken chairs. It was too close to the college for one thing. And too far a walk from the flat, even when the weather was good and even when it wasn’t a Saturday. 

It didn’t help that he was hungover as he made the journey six city blocks from his front door. He still hadn't managed the effort to get himself a proper coat and the dry snap of frigid late-December air made the dull pulse in his head feel like the normal hammers had been strapped with razor wire.

Winter was a special kind of misery all its own. The gap between the Christmas holidays and the start of spring classes had a wasted, barren feel to it, augmented by the grey skies bringing freezing rain and despair. It was particularly palpable in the queue of shambling, caffeine-deprived university students out the door to the cafe, broke from the holidays and rabidly anticipating their next grant disbursement all while cobbling their coins and crumpled notes together to be able to split a cream tea between seven of them. The air crackled with stress, the misery of empty pocket books, and early death. 

If Vyvyan could have slept through it all, he would have, tea or no tea. But Neil had stayed over a long holiday at his parent's home, leaving their kitchen abandoned and the cupboard empty. Vyvyan himself had been prodded out of bed by sharp elbows and the promise of a... _warm_ return. 

This abrupt reversal in the household chain of command should have been something he was used to after nearly seven months. He wasn’t. Normally it only chafed when Michael spotted it and gave him a knowing smirk, but just that little reminder of _why_ he was in this most hated of places was enough today. And every clink of counting coins and nasally whispered order made it worse.

"Have you got 70p more?" someone asked. "Just 70p and we can get a piece of cake as well..."

Vyvyan signed leaning his hand against the brick wall for support.

By the time the queue was short enough that everyone was inside, the front door kept opening, bringing with it a renewed rush of cold air, and the clanging off-key singing from the buskers outside; three girls with messy dark hair warbling their way through "Six Different Ways," banging out the notes on a dented marimba and an old drum kit that made Vyvyan want to kick them all over the nearest garden wall.

The oven, used to bake hellish amounts of jam tarts and to heat already crisp sausage rolls, was up front as well; emitting Catalan forge-grade heat that made the shop girl look like she was standing under a waterfall and threatening to melt the face from the person at the front of the line. Getting cold from the back and hellfire from the front did nothing to improve Vyvyan’s mood or the sharp pulsing in his brain. 

The bell over the door frame jingled as the door swung inward, loud and cheerful as a threat and Vyvyan felt his will snap as the cold air ran up his back.

“LOOK, COULD YOU SHUT THE BLOODY DOOR? PLEASE?!”

“Vyvyan?”

His head whipped around at the familiar voice. 

Sally's hair was shorter than the last time he had seen her. His former case worker had worn her hair in a ponytail all during the years she'd visited Vyvyan in care, collecting him from each failed foster home and shuttling him to court dates and school interviews in her dented yellow Taunus. Now it was loose and layered, auburn curls brushing her face as the breeze from the open doorway tried to take it. 

“How..how are you?” she managed, looking as stunned as he felt. 

He bolted past her for the door, past the buskers outside, past the familiar city blocks and landmarks. His adrenaline was still spiking from the flight response as he finally mounted the steps to the front door and up to his room. 

He registered a tentative _“Vyvyan? Did you remember the tea?”_ from across the hall just before he slammed the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time I've written a new story with these characters in more than ten years! It's quite fun. Sally is one of the characters mentioned in [Notifiable Incident](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5887663). You don't need to read that story for the larger context, but some of the details from that story will be revisited in this one. 
> 
> Technically, there is no marimba in The Cure's live performances of "Six Different Ways" -- those lovely woodwind notes actually come from a synthesizer. Oh well. It's a miserable Saturday morning in January and the batteries probably gave up.


	2. Chapter 2

Neil returned two days later, hair trimmed, clothes cleaned, and a new batch of complaints about his parents that Vyvyan pretended to listen to over breakfast. He might have made a better job of it... if his arrival hadn't also happened to coincide with Rick leaving to visit what was left of his own family for the post-Christmas hols. Leaving Vyvyan with a cold bed and a ticking time bomb where his admittedly short patience should have been. He spent the next six days on a whirlwind of breaking everything in his room.   
  
"Hey, Vyvyan? _Vyvyan?_ You don't normally break your own things...so much. Anymore. Is everything all right?"  
  
He responded by throwing a ram's head in the direction of Neil's voice.

"I'd give the lad some space, Neil. Probably just a case of blue b--" Michael said, his voice cut off by the slamming door.  
  
\--  
  
Vyvyan was beginning to suspect the cafe staff at Rats in the Walls were keeping the oven on at full-blast all day to compensate for a faltering radiator. The difference in temperature between the front door and the counter was particularly obvious as the line got shorter. His body was torn between being distressed over the sudden perspiration and the hunger that had suddenly jumped from 'mild' to 'fucking devastating' in the space of a few seconds when the bell above the door rang behind him.  
  
"Vyvyan?"  
  
Sally looked less shocked to see him this time, smiling and open as she approached him. He managed to find his voice by the time she reached him.  
  
"All right, Sally?"  
  
"I thought that was you last week. Though I must say you're camouflaged pretty well -- what's all this about?" she asked, her hand waving in the direction of her nose and brow in reference to his septum piercing and epaulets.  
  
"Bloody hell, what's that about?!" he pointed to the grey streak that started at her brow and was brushed down the left side.  
  
She laughed. ""I'm getting old. Too many years of government officials.”  
  
She couldn't have been more than 35 -- the woman he knew had been barely out of school when she was assigned his case. But that was also a decade plus of bad bureaucrats, bad government, and bad parents. And bad kids like Vyvyan. Premature aging was probably the least of her worries.

"Bastards."  
  
"Every single one of them," she laughed. "Can I spot your tea?"  
  
"If I can pay for your tart."  
  
\--  
  
Sally had a grey streak and a wool pea coat in place of the coral vinyl jacket he remembered. She still kept crumpled notes in the inside pocket of her jacket rather than risk a handbag around small children and nasty adults and, Vyvyan noticed, dosed her tea to a milky beige and ate the fondant and cherry first from her Bakewell tart.  
  
They sat together on a bench at the edge of the park, making him recall the countless times they’d noshed quick meals in the front seat of her car or in the corridor outside family court. He had used her jacket for a blanket more than once when he was small.   
  
"Did you get shorter?" he asked, breaking the ice.  
  
“I told you I'm getting old! You were up to my waist when I met you. And I'm sure you walk better in snow in motorcycle boots than I do in heels," she said, taking a long drink. "Bloody hell, I hate decaf."  
  
“Is that all they'll let you drink now?” The DES. Vyvyan hadn't had to say their name in almost four years and he wasn't about to start now.  
  
She nodded. "I'm on medical sabbatical for the next couple of weeks and then eight months leave after that.”  
  
“Medical..," he found himself staring into her eyes, looking for petechial hemorrhage, signs of jaundice, any number of symptoms he had been quizzed on dozens of times in three years of medical studies. "Are you ill?”  
  
She cleared her throat, looking downward, finally unbuttoning her coat when Vyvyan didn’t take the hint. Her belly was swollen underneath her tan jumper.  
  
“Oh, I see!” he said, trying not to shout. He had forgotten how holding your voice back from shouting hurt almost as much as shouting. “I had one of those last year.”  
  
She stared at him for a long moment. “Did you?”  
  
“Well, I thought I might," he conceded. "Picked names out and everything. Is it a boy or a girl?”  
  
She shook her head, mouth open and abruptly shut. “I... 'Don’t know. I want to be surprised. In three weeks time, give or take, I will be.”

Several questions flurried through his mind: who was the dad? Was there a dad? The majority of the foster homes she had shuttled him to had two parents. Had she gotten married at some point between his eighteenth birthday and now? Or had she decided to do this on her own? Most of all, after a decade of dealing with kids like Vyvyan, when exactly had Sally decided that was a burden she needed to shoulder personally?

He drank his tea instead, wrinkling his nose against the lack of sugar.   
  
"I liked 'Piss Off' for a name,'" he said, finally, watching as Sally nearly spit her own tea out. "'Handy for getting into fights."  
  
"And non-gender specific," she smiled. "Good choice. No 'Stalag 17' or 'Death Camp Battalion?'"  
  
"That's another good one."  
  
"You got me reading your comic books." She pushed her sleeve up, glancing at her watch. "Fuck, I'm late. My doctor's near here -- I've got a standing appointment through my due date... Same time next week?"

The hesitance in her tone shocked him. The lack of hesitance in his own answer shocked him even more.   
  
"Piss off!"  
  
"Right," she laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name of the Rats in the Walls cafe comes from an H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name -- about cannibalism. Not quite as erudite a reference as _Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!_ but it's hard to beat the source material that is this show's writing.


End file.
